


With Our Hearts Still Beating

by Dira Sudis (dsudis)



Category: Spy Game (2001)
Genre: Bruises, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, Like for real talking like normal people more or less, M/M, Minor Injuries, Post-Canon, Relationship Negotiation, Talking, unconventional relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-25
Updated: 2020-05-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 20:22:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24372721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/pseuds/Dira%20Sudis
Summary: After Operation Dinner Out is accomplished, Tom tracks Nathan down for a long-overdue conversation. Among other things.
Relationships: Tom Bishop/Nathan Muir
Comments: 30
Kudos: 85





	With Our Hearts Still Beating

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "You Were Cool" by the Mountain Goats: _It's good to be young, but let's not kid ourselves / It's better to pass on through those years and come out the other side / With our hearts still beating / Having stared down demons and come back breathing_
> 
> Many many thanks to eatingcroutons for beta and for generally encouraging this, both in 2015 when I started it and over the last couple of weeks when I suddenly decided to finish and post it out of the blue. 
> 
> After watching the movie in 2015 I spent a lot of time trying to figure out the significance of some of the very last lines of the movie being about Nathan having gotten married just once, in Korea, and of the route Nathan is seen taking as he flees, and also my longstanding wish for a coda to the movie finally overflowed, and ... this happened.

Tom hadn't slept for something like five days when he pulled into the driveway of a house on the edge of Savannah, a little before noon on April 18, 1991. 

His head was pounding, and his broken arm was shooting fire from his fingertips to his chest, making his heart jitter with every beat. He had maybe half his normal field of vision, thanks to the bruises and swelling around his eyes. He'd nonetheless driven the last two hours from the airport in Charleston instead of waiting for a connecting flight to Savannah. An alarmingly trusting woman at the airport had agreed to rent the car for him when he asked--not so much to keep it untraceable as because he was pretty sure no one in their right mind would sign a car over to him looking the way he looked, practiced charm or no.

His practiced charm had been worn pretty fucking thin at that point anyway. He was staying awake just to ward off the nightmares that were going to be inevitable once he let the last five days sink in. He knew he had to get somewhere safe first.

He was somewhere safe now, he was pretty sure. He just had to get out of the car and make it to the door. As long as Sarah let him in...

His eyes closed and he was drifting, half-dreaming about lying in the hammock in Sarah's backyard. He snapped awake--the clock showed maybe two minutes had passed--and realized that Sarah had come out onto the porch. She didn't call out, or come any closer. She waited for him to make his move.

Tom clumsily unfastened his seatbelt and unfolded himself slowly from the car as every joint and muscle protested. By the time he was actually on his feet Sarah had her arms folded around her middle. Her face was perfectly serene. He didn't know her expressions well enough to gauge how practiced this one was, but he knew he didn't look good.

He walked slowly, one step at a time, up the drive and up the walk while she stood still and waited for him. He glanced up at her again and again as he approached, trying to see if--how--she'd changed.

There was more white in her black hair than he'd seen six years ago, the only other time he'd met her face to face. Her age didn't show as clearly on her face, but he knew she was a few years older than Nathan. She was wearing soft linen pants with a silk shirt, casual but still immaculately correct. A perfect Southern lady, except that she was Korean, and married to a man she'd barely seen in thirty years.

Tom couldn't throw stones; he hadn't seen her husband in a long time either.

She came down the porch steps when he reached them, stopping on the last one. With him on the ground, their heights were about equal. 

"Ma'am," he said, as she tipped his chin up with cool fingertips, studying his bruises. "Is he..."

"I believe I told you my name last time you were here, Thomas."

Tom mustered up a smile. She'd told him several of her names, in fact, but he knew which one to use. "Sarah. Is he?"

Tom wasn't the only one who would have needed a safe place. Tom had been burned, but Nathan was being _hunted_.

"Not right this second. He went into town to make some calls."

Tom felt a spike of fear at the thought of Nathan alone, without backup, without _him_. He knew, distantly, that it was his own exhaustion and residual terror talking--Nathan could handle himself, demonstrably a hell of a lot better than Tom could--but his heart raced, making his arm and head and face all hurt worse. He pulled away from Sarah's grip to duck his head, trying to fight off the hot prickle of panicked tears.

"Tom," Sarah said gently, hand on his shoulder. "It's all right. You're safe here. He's safe. He'll be home soon. Come in and lie down."

Tom nodded stiffly and let her guide him up the porch steps and into the house. It smelled familiar, felt familiar, from that one visit years ago. Being in Sarah's quiet house after all this time running felt like the first moment on land after too long aboard a ship. He didn't know anymore how to stand on solid ground. 

His knees weakened. 

Sarah's arm went around his waist, her shoulder under his good arm. He tried to straighten up--to look where they were going--but the best he could do was to not lie down right there on the floor in her entryway. She guided him into the front parlor and over to a couch, which he vaguely remembered being stiff and uncomfortable. 

Now it felt like the best thing he'd ever fallen asleep on.

* * *

As soon as he saw the car in the drive with South Carolina plates and rental company decals, Nathan knew.

He parked his own car behind it, close enough to hide the plates from casual view, and got out to look over the vehicle. Keys had been dropped in the foot well on the driver's side: not a good sign. Door wasn't locked, either. Not uncommon here, but not something that particular driver would have done, normally.

Nathan got in and checked the car for other clues. No blood, no luggage, not so much as a stray gum wrapper. The rental paperwork in the glove box bore an unfamiliar woman's signature and a notation that the hefty deposit had been paid in cash. 

Nathan tucked the papers into his pocket and then sat still for a moment. He put the key in the ignition and his hands on the wheel and appreciated the exact slight wrongness of a driver's seat and mirrors adjusted for Tom's comfort instead of his own. 

There was nothing else in the car to speak of him, but it had to be him. No one else would have come here. Sumi wouldn't have let anyone else in.

Nathan hadn't believed he would come.

He had... pictured it. Maybe even hoped a little. Let himself have a moment here and there to be wistful for something that hadn't failed to happen yet. But he hadn't gotten anywhere near believing it would. Not now, not after six years, not after Nathan had set Tom--and Elizabeth Hadley--as free as he knew how. Harry had confirmed that he'd seen them both safe, and Nathan figured that was the last he was going to hear. One more job well done that disappeared into the silence of a crisis averted.

But Tom had come. He wouldn't have if he was planning to take Elizabeth and run. He wouldn't have if there were any other safe place where he'd rather be. He had come knowing that this was Nathan's last best refuge. He would be just inside.

Nathan turned the car on and pulled it all the way up the drive and onto the grass beside the garage, out of sight of the road and most of the neighbors. Tom had come here to be safe, and Nathan planned to keep him that way.

He let himself in by the back door and didn't bother to say anything to announce himself. The house was quiet enough that Sumi would hear him unless Tom was taking up all her attention, and Tom... well. Nathan wanted to see before he was seen, if he could.

He made it all the way to the front room before he saw or heard a thing. Sumi was perched on an ottoman next to the godawful pink horsehair sofa, and Tom was collapsed on it, sleeping like the extremely bruised and undignified dead. His head was tilted back, mouth wide open, drool gathering at the corner of his lips. 

It had been six years. It had been three days. Nathan couldn't remember when he'd been more glad to see anyone.

"There you are," Sumi said, in a low, even voice as he crouched beside her, his eyes still roving over Tom. "Couldn't have shown up ten minutes earlier to help me turn him onto his back, could you? He went facedown like a tree falling, I thought he might suffocate himself."

"At least they didn't break his nose." 

It was about as much as could be said for him, beyond the fact that he had gotten here under his own power. The upper half of Tom's face was an ugly patchwork of purple-black bruises, just starting to go sickly green around the edges. His right arm was in a cast, and his left hand showed healing scrapes. A bandage ringed his wrist where he'd probably cut it up fighting restraints. There would be more bruises under his clothes, more bandages. His hair was cut short, sticking out every which way; there was a line of stitches visible behind his right ear. 

He was wearing sneakers, still laced up tight, and someone else's clothes, ill-fitting and crumpled. He had to have been on the move almost without a pause since Harry last saw him, and any temporary safehouse he'd touched down in hadn't been equipped to supply him better than this. 

Nathan closed both hands into fists to keep from touching him.

"What do you think?"

Sumi sighed. "I think he made some people very angry, and they didn't expect to be prevented from executing him. He needs to rest, and--"

Tom's whole body tensed, both arms drawing up defensively, and he sucked in a breath through clenched teeth.

Nathan reached out automatically, running his fingers gently through Tom's hair, alert for more scalp wounds. He felt the prickle of stitches brushing past one fingertip, but Tom sighed and settled, turning his face toward Nathan. 

He repeated the touch, adjusting the path his fingers took to avoid hurting him. Tom's arms sagged and his breathing evened. 

"And he needs to feel safe in order to rest," Sumi finished. "I would have put him directly into your bed, since you didn't want to open up a room for him, but he barely made it this far."

Nathan shook his head slightly. He rested his hand gingerly on Tom's chest, feeling the beat of his heart, the shallow rise and fall of his breathing. With Tom in this rough a shape, he'd probably come this far more or less on autopilot, homing in on a safe place. There was no knowing what he wanted beyond that, not really.

"You never did tell me how he found you," Nathan remarked, sidestepping the rest. 

"He didn't." 

Nathan looked over, and Sumi was smiling--smirking--down at Tom.

"He made himself available for me to find," Sumi semi-explained. "Very courteous. Very respectful."

"Did you ever tell him just how good you are at finding things?"

"Or how well I know what it's like to fall in love with you while working as your spy?" Sumi shook her head. "Not in so many words. I don't know how much he deduced. Probably quite a lot--he was yours, after all."

Nathan nodded and brushed his thumb over Tom's chest. He'd be able to ask when Tom woke up. Tom had come back to him. Whatever he wanted from Nathan, Tom had come to him. They had time now, and nothing else between them.

"Right, you're here now, you sit with him," Sumi said, running her hand lightly over Nathan's hair as she stood. "I've got errands to run. I'll get rid of that car and catch a cab back."

Nathan caught Sumi's hand and kissed her knuckles before she tugged out of his grip. Then he pulled the ottoman over and sat down on it, without ever taking his hand off Tom. 

* * *

Tom woke up but kept still--didn't tense or open his eyes or change the rhythm of his breathing. Nathan was nearby, Tom could feel him close. If Tom was really lucky--

Nathan's fingers brushed gently through his hair, waking up his headache, his everything-ache. God, he'd fucked something up badly. But not so badly that he wasn't safe with Nathan, and not so badly that Nathan was too mad to touch him while he slept. So whatever he'd done, it would be all right.

Tom couldn't think of what it was right now--if he did he'd wake up too much to keep still, and then he'd give himself away. He focused on Nathan's touch instead, the smell of him leaning close. Nathan's lips brushed his cheek, the corner of his mouth, and Tom didn't let himself tense with the effort of not reacting. 

"I'm gonna take your shoes off you," Nathan murmured. "All right? You fell asleep with your shoes on."

Tom knew better than to react to a lure as obvious as that. He stayed still, breathing evenly, eyes lightly closed. Nathan's lips brushed his cheek again, and then the warmth of Nathan's closeness shifted away from him. His hand rested gently on Tom's calf--a place that didn't particularly hurt--and he felt the lessening of pressure as Nathan undid his shoelaces.

_Keep sleeping_ , he told himself. _Keep sleeping and he'll keep touching you. Keep sleeping, pretend it's not happening, and he won't pull away._

The best way to win this game was to fall asleep for real, and Tom was aiming for a championship performance.

* * *

It was surprising the things that came back when he needed them.  
It had been more than six years since he'd done anything like this, and he would have sworn these were details that time had taken away. He would have said he really didn't know Tom this well anymore.

But when Tom slept, Nathan still knew every twitch, every breath, all the patterns he fell into. He knew when Tom was sleeping deeply enough to be left alone for a few minutes, and when he was starting to dream and needed to be gentled away from a nightmare. 

Nathan caught him waking up into motionless alertness every hour or so. He reached out to pet Tom almost before he recognized why, but the way of it came back to him like he'd just been doing this yesterday. The first time he eased Tom out of his shoes, and the second time his socks. 

The third time, having procured the appropriate supplies, he murmured as he ran his fingers through Tom's hair, "I'm going to get this shirt off you, all right?"

He watched Tom's face staying carefully still as he played possum. He couldn't be entirely awake--Nathan was pretty sure that if Tom were fully aware of where he was, he'd open his eyes and look back, no matter how well he'd been trained to do this--but he was aware enough to absorb Nathan's warning. He didn't startle when Nathan unbuttoned the light shirt he was wearing.

The bruises beneath were as ugly as Nathan had expected. It was like a blow he saw coming all the way that still knocked the breath out of him, seeing those marks on Tom's body. This was what they'd been doing to him, while Nathan had been spinning stories for Troy's little committee, tweaking Harker, leading them all on a merry chase. Tom had been in some hole, being beaten by people who planned to kill him before these bruises had time to darken. Nathan had never forgotten the stakes, but every new piece of evidence was somehow shocking anyway. No matter what risks he ran, he'd never had this much on the line.

But every visible sign was also proof that it was over. Nathan had done his job one last time, and Tom had come out the other side of the op. Burned and battered, but alive. 

Nathan was transfixed by the sight of Tom long enough that Tom had settled back into deeper sleep before Nathan made himself move again. He decided to chance it and picked up the scissors. 

* * *

He had to get up. He had to get up, there were only minutes. No one was counting the time for him, no one was talking to him. He was alone, he had to fix it somehow, he had to get _out_ , but the blanket was covering his face. He had to move, push the blanket back, but his body wouldn't obey him. He had to--had to move. He had to _move_ , but the blanket--

Tom sat straight up, gasping harshly as pain blazed through him, and the first thing he saw was Nathan startling awake at his side. 

It was enough to completely wipe the nightmare from his awareness: he couldn't think of anything but his first sight of the man in six years. Nathan Fucking Muir was sitting on the floor beside the uncomfortable pink couch, his cheek creased where he'd obviously been leaning it against the sheet Tom was wrapped in. His hair was rumpled, and he wasn't wearing his glasses. 

Tom just stared at him--a sight for sore fucking eyes indeed. Nathan looked back for a couple of breaths, and then he smiled.

It was that warm, fond smile that meant Tom had done something right. He couldn't help smiling back.

"Hey, sleeping beauty," Nathan said, his voice night-quiet and raspy with disuse. 

It was exactly the sort of thing Nathan would say. It fit into Tom like a key into a lock, familiar and normal. For just a second, it felt like this could be any night of his life with Nathan. 

He opened his mouth to answer, leaning toward him a little, and the sheet slithered around his naked body as every point of pain flared up at once. He froze, and lost that moment of perfect balance.

This wasn't just any night. His life with Nathan--at least in the sense that he could expect to wake up with Nathan in arm's reach from time to time--had ended years ago. 

The worst and best parts of the last five days flickered through his mind in nightmare flashes that were sickeningly real: Su Chou, and Elizabeth, and nearly dying about five different times in twenty-four hours while the clock ticked down, and _rescue_. He never could have dreamed up that part.

_Operation Dinner Out_.

"Nathan," Tom managed, wheezing like he'd just been punched, like he'd just been shot, feeling the shock of it all over again. Nathan had done this. After all the years and all those warnings, after everything Tom had fucked up, Nathan had pulled him out of the fire. Tom slumped forward, his elbows landing on his thighs, his head hanging. Nathan moved beside him, straightening up on his knees.

His arm wrapped around Tom's shoulders as Tom took a heaving breath.

"I'm here," Nathan whispered. 

Tom reached for him, knocking the edge of his cast against Nathan's chest before he hooked his fingers into the front of Nathan's shirt.

Nathan didn't seem to notice, wrapping his other arm around Tom to complete the circle. "I'm here, Tom. I've got you. It's all right now. I've got you."

Tom rested his forehead against Nathan's shoulder. His eyes were so swollen that crying blinded him almost immediately. He'd held it off almost perfectly for the days since he got out, all through wishing Elizabeth well and saying a very final goodbye at the gates of the British Consulate, through retrieving a stash of money and documents that would get him out of Hong Kong and, with a few nerve-racking detours, into the US. He'd soldiered on, sleepless but functional, for however many days it had been now.

He couldn't anymore. Not with Nathan holding him, muttering comfort in his ear like he knew exactly how far past the end of his rope Tom was. He was safe. Nathan was here. He could have his inevitable breakdown now that the op was done. Nathan understood; Nathan had been the one to explain it to him, the first time he fell apart like this.

It didn't take long before crying made his face hurt so badly that he had to stop, tilting his head back and taking snotty, stilted breaths that caught badly in the middle. Nathan let go of him and stood up. "Heat or ice?"

"Ice," Tom said, shaky and thick, and then immediately shook his head. "Heat, heat."

"Keep breathing." Nathan walked away, letting Tom judder his way down to something like calm.

His tenuous control shook when the damp heat of a washcloth settled over his eyes. 

"Here you go, sit back." Nathan's hands were on Tom's shoulders, turning him to sit properly on the couch. Tom let himself be guided and relaxed against it, tilting his head back to rest against the wall. He was untidily shrouded in the sheet, and he let his hands lie on his thighs, not bothering to try to rearrange it.

Nathan sat down beside him, the length of his thigh running along Tom's, his shoulder set against Tom's. 

Tom didn't even think about it. He let his muscles go slack, and did his best to force his breaths into a sleeping rhythm.

Nathan let out a bare breath that a trained observer could have recognized as a laugh under certain circumstances. Tom felt him shifting to get a better angle, and then Nathan's fingers were in his hair.

Tom kept perfectly still, breathing evenly.

Nathan nuzzled at the line of his jaw, the exposed vulnerability of his throat. When he spoke his breath was warm on Tom's ear, and his voice was low and wry but so soft that it couldn't be a performance. This was only for Tom, which meant it was probably real.

"You know, when I started this I honestly just meant to train you not to give yourself away when you woke up."

Tom did know that. And he knew that it had stopped being that, and become something else entirely, inside a month. 

He also knew that the rules of a game didn't mean a thing if both people involved didn't agree to follow them. It would never have become what it became, or lasted as long as it lasted, if Tom hadn't adopted Nathan's rules as his own, and kept playing by them long after he could have demanded something else.

Still his throat nearly closed when he tried to find the words. He didn't move, and his breathing stayed exactly regulated, no hint of the sobbing of a few moments ago.

It had been so fucking good, for a while there, to have rules to follow. To believe that rules could make this safe. 

"Came in handy a few times," he muttered, after a long enough pause that Nathan had probably worked out ten possible replies and strategized answers to all of them.

Nathan's hand was still running gently through his hair, and Nathan pressed a kiss just under his ear.

Rewarding him for speaking instead of pretending to sleep. The irony, Tom knew, was not lost on either of them.

"It's how I knew." Tom was going to have to say some of this stuff in words at some point. He might as well do it early, when there was extra leeway for uncontrolled emotional reactions.

"How you knew what?" Nathan prompted softly.

"Not this, or not..." Tom trailed off. 

Nathan stopped petting him and put his arm around Tom's shoulders instead, rubbing his knuckles gently against Tom's jaw.

"The way you lied to me," Tom said. 

After a while it had been the only topic on which Nathan really lied to him. He'd omitted things--Nathan didn't fully disclose anything to anyone--but after Tom's first few years what Nathan did say had generally been true, which had made the lies easier to spot.

"Ah." Nathan understood the connection, Tom knew. 

They had played out the pretense that Nathan wouldn't touch him if he didn't pretend to be asleep, but that was just a microcosm of the way they played out the pretense around the whole thing between them. They had both pretended that it was merely sexual, merely situational, that emotional reactions naturally followed from it but didn't add up to anything meaningful. 

"In Damascus," Tom went on, feeling a little like he was dreaming, finally actually saying this stuff to Nathan after literal years of imagining doing it. He'd never pictured being naked in Sarah's parlor for this conversation, but life was funny like that. "In '81, that was when I really got it, because you lied to me about Sarah the same way."

It had hit him all at once, both halves of a cypher suddenly slotting into place. There was a particular way that Nathan lied _about_ someone he cared about _to_ someone he cared about. He lied to Tom about Sarah just like he lied to Tom about Tom himself. There was a fucked up perverse protectiveness in it, the same as ran through everything between him and Nathan, down at the bedrock. 

"In '81, in Damascus," Nathan said, his voice low and thoughtful. "You'd figured out that I'd been married--really married--in Korea. And what I told you was that it didn't work out, being apart so much."

"I knew," Tom muttered. "I knew you still loved her and I knew you loved me. I knew it was the same. And I knew I had to find her."

He'd needed to know what Sarah Muir knew. How to survive loving Nathan and being loved by him, when love wasn't enough to trump his goddamn _rules_.

"She told me, after Beirut." Nathan shifted his hand back to Tom's hair, scratching gently now at the places that didn't hurt. "When I told her about you leaving. She said you'd been in touch since '82."

"Letters," Tom agreed. "I never met her until October of '84, after that whole clusterfuck."

A trained observer would note the hitch in Nathan's breathing, the suppression of a sigh. 1984 had not been a good year for them, although admittedly '85 had been worse.

"When I finally checked my dead drop again, I had a stack of letters from her, and the last one had this address, which was basically an engraved invitation. I knew better than to refuse a lady's hospitality."

"And she finally told you my birthday."

"Among other things," Tom agreed. 

Nathan must have known how Tom found out, but of course neither of them had acknowledged it. And how much of what followed in Beirut, in the days after Nathan's birthday, had to do with Tom knowing Nathan's real secret--knowing the woman he loved and the distance they kept between them to protect each other? All of it and none of it, in between the contorted layers of pretenses, all those rules and all that love. 

"But she couldn't--she didn't..." Tom swallowed. "I'm not Sarah, Nathan. I'm not you, and I'm not her, and I can't..."

"Shh," Nathan murmured, kissing his temple, the curve of his ear. "Shh, sweetheart, I know. I know who you are."

Tom shivered all over at the pet name, at the undeniable truth. 

No one else knew him, not the way Nathan did, because Nathan had made him. And no one else knew Nathan like Tom did, because Nathan was in him like he hadn't put himself into anyone else. Tom couldn't stay away for decades; six years had been a constant struggle. He couldn't carve Nathan out of himself and leave enough of himself to go on with, and he didn't fucking want to. Not if there was some other option.

But he couldn't be the guy he'd been for those ten years, either, or let Nathan be the way _he'd_ been. He couldn't go right back to the seductive ease of following Nathan's rules and pretending that that made this safe. 

Of course, as always, Nathan had been one step ahead of him, blowing up the rules where Tom merely broke them, rescuing Elizabeth when Tom had failed. He'd put things right in a way Tom couldn't ever have asked him to.

Tom swallowed and leaned into Nathan's warmth, trying to think of how to say any of what he had to say about what he had done, what Nathan had done, what any of it meant. 

Nathan leaned away from him slightly, his hand running through Tom's hair again. Tom let out a breath and mumbled, "Thanks."

Nathan's laugh this time was actually audible, a short, warm acknowledgment of the absurdity of Tom trying to thank him. 

"You're welcome," he said lightly, before Tom could try to explain. 

He'd mostly meant _thanks for giving me some breathing room right this minute_. But then Nathan would know that Tom wasn't trying to thank him for any of the big things with a simple word.

"You should eat something," Nathan added. "Do you want me to bring it here, or do you want to come to the kitchen with me?"

"Kitchen," Tom said, tugging the cloth away from his eyes. Nathan took it from him and helped him up. Tom let the sheet fall away as he did--it was certainly warm enough in the house, and it wasn't like there was any point concealing himself from Nathan. Among other things, Nathan was the one who had gotten him out of his clothes in the first place.

Nathan looked him up and down--more assessing than appreciative, which didn't tell him much given the pathetic state he was in--and said dryly, "Not worried about scandalizing my wife?"

"She's your wife, Nathan," Tom said, and his voice almost didn't wobble. "It's gonna take more than my bare ass to scandalize her."

* * *

Nathan settled Tom at the kitchen table with a glass of sweet tea. Tom grimaced at the first sip, but Nathan didn't have to remind him that he needed sugar and fluids; he sipped it obediently while Nathan threw together eggs and bacon and toast. Nathan watched the food closely, keeping all three of them slightly less cooked than they really should be, because that was the way Tom liked them.

Tom smiled at Nathan as he dunked his pale golden toast into his runny eggs, and Nathan sat back and watched him. He looked better in motion. He looked like himself instead of a body that could so easily have been a corpse. 

Nathan found himself reflexively calculating when he'd be healed up, when Tom would be ready for--

But there wasn't another op. There wasn't a job. There wasn't anything between them now except history and Tom's choice to be here, when he could have gone anywhere. When just about anywhere would have been safer and easier than coming here.

Tom looked over at him with an expression rendered mostly inscrutable by his bruises.

Nathan sat back in his chair, around the corner of the table from Tom, and waited.

"Tell me something," Tom finally said, and immediately dropped his gaze back to his plate, pushing his eggs around with his fork. "Why did you include Elizabeth in the op? Why'd you rescue her with me?"

There had been a thousand reasons not to. A second target had upped the odds of failure or casualties, and he'd been risking regular soldiers on this. Elizabeth, meanwhile, had actually been guilty of the crime the Chinese convicted her of, even if they'd done so in secret. She wasn't a US national, nor in any way under US authority, so Nathan had had about as much right to pull her out as he had to the Chinese guy in the next cell. 

Taking her also increased the risk that the whole thing blew up into an international crisis that would force the CIA to find him and convict him of something serious--to say nothing of causing an international crisis in the first place, which was the sort of thing he'd spent his career preventing. And that was just the fact of taking her; the whole problem was compounded further by the fact that, once she was free, she would be at liberty to do exactly what he'd prevented by putting her away in the first place.

And none of that had mattered much, when he sat down to write the order. 

"First of all," Nathan said, shuffling through what he remembered of his thought process that night, "you'd already been burned, so she couldn't endanger you in that way anymore."

Tom's posture stiffened. Not the answer he wanted, but Nathan wasn't in the business of lying to him. Not anymore. If Elizabeth had still posed a danger to Tom--when Tom was very clearly enough of a danger to himself without her active assistance--it would never have even crossed Nathan's mind to include her.

"Second, six years in a Chinese prison seemed like a sufficient punishment for the crime she actually did commit, to say nothing of being a long enough cooling-off period to sever all her old connections. So, again, she was no longer a serious threat."

Tom pushed his plate away--without a bite of food left on it, so if he was trying to imply a rejection of Nathan's care the gesture was pretty empty. He sat back, folding his arms across his bare chest, which only reminded Nathan that he was naked, literally holding nothing back here. He'd thrown out that question as if he could stand up, walk out, and never look back if he didn't like the answer. For all Nathan knew, he would anyway.

Nathan felt the same mixture of awe and terror that Boy Scout's ability to keep _feeling_ things had always inspired, and that reminder of what really mattered here made it a little easier to get on with the important parts.

"But those were really just factors that didn't rule it out," Nathan went on. "So, really, the main reason was that you had already concluded that retrieving her was worth risking your life and the lives of everybody else on the team you assembled--and don't think we're not going to talk later about that particular method of exiting your career when you hit your limit."

Tom grimaced but didn't dispute the observation, which was probably a better sign than otherwise.

Nathan softened his voice as he got back to the main point. "I wanted to get you out of there, but just keeping you alive wasn't going to mean much if I did it by taking that decision away from you."

Nathan was glad, in a cowardly way, that the bruises muffled Tom's expression right then. Even with that camouflage, he couldn't help seeing how blankly stunned Tom was by Nathan's profession of respect for his priorities.

Well, they had to start somewhere.

"In the end," Nathan went on, "I pulled her out for the same reason I sent them after you--because when it came down to it nothing mattered more to me than you, and it seemed like what you wanted more than anything was her."

Tom was actually leaning back enough to tip his chair a little, digging his fingers into his ribs. Nathan smiled ruthlessly and pushed it all the way through.

"Because I love you," Nathan clarified. "And when I decide to break rules, I don't play around."

Tom's breath went out in a rush. "Jesus, Nathan, you--"

Tom rocked forward and came out of his chair all in one motion, leaning across to Nathan. He braced himself on the edge of the table, his right hand in its cast landing on Nathan's shoulder. 

Tom kissed him, rough enough that it had to hurt. Nathan put one hand over Tom's on the table, wrapped the other around the back of his neck, and kissed him back just as hard and fast, and didn't let up at the faint taste of blood.

He had, after all, just made a point about respecting Tom's choices, or at least the ones that weren't actively suicidal.

"I can't," Tom muttered when he finally picked his head up. He was breathing harder than Nathan was, holding on too tight to both the table and his shoulder. "Nathan, you--I can't--"

This was probably not the time to ask Tom what the hell kind of answer he expected. 

"It's all right," Nathan said instead. "Sit down a second--"

Tom shook his head but also tried to shift his weight onto his right arm, driving the edge of his cast into Nathan's shoulder just before Tom made a startled, strangled sound and recoiled. Nathan stood up as Tom straightened, stepping around the corner of the table to catch him before he could overbalance. Tom had his right arm clutched protectively to his chest, a barrier between them, but he threw his left arm around Nathan's shoulders. Nathan braced against his weight with both arms around Tom's back, hoping futilely that none of his ribs were broken, that being caught didn't hurt him nearly as much as taking the fall would have.

It happened in a blink, a quick succession of reflex actions, and then they were standing in Sumi's kitchen at midnight with their arms--three out of four, anyway--around each other. Tom was panting quietly, from pain or because he'd never gotten his breath back from kissing, but he leaned his temple against Nathan's, pressing closer than Nathan was holding him. 

"So I'm rethinking my odds of scandalizing your wife," Tom said after a minute.

Nathan smiled against Tom's cheek and shifted one hand down to pat Tom's ass, bare and mostly unbruised. "Think you can make it up the stairs?"

Tom sighed but nodded, and a second later he pushed himself back from Nathan. Nathan loosened his grip cautiously, but Tom had gotten his balance back, physically and otherwise. He still had his right arm held close to his chest, but he was steady on his feet. He made a little gesture for Nathan to lead the way.

Nathan shook his head and put his hand on Tom's shoulder, turning him toward the front of the house and following on his heels. 

* * *

Tom found himself thinking, _That was too easy_ , at the same time he was gripping the stair railing and focusing intently on getting his foot onto the next step, and he had to stop and lean against the wall to laugh. He kept it silent by reflex, but Nathan's hand was still on his shoulder, steering him like he might get lost between the bottom of the stairs and the top, so of course Nathan felt it.

He crowded up onto the same step Tom was on, wrapping himself firmly around Tom's shaking body. After a few seconds Tom let out a helpless little hiccup of sound instead of getting himself under control, and Nathan tightened his grip.

"Do you want to share the joke, or should I haul you the rest of the way up the stairs so you can have your nervous breakdown on a soft surface?"

Tom shook his head.

_Too easy_ , after ten life-altering, soul-shattering years together, after six years apart that ended with him capping off a spate of deniable recklessness by going AWOL and taking a pretty good shot at getting himself killed along with his career. After nearly dying only to be saved because Nathan upended his own entire life to make it happen. After sneaking back into a country that had turned its back on him, while he was still in such rough shape that a flight of stairs was a serious challenge. 

It still felt too easy, because for once he had asked a question and Nathan had just answered it. 

Tom focused on breathing in and out and managed to say quietly, with only an echo of laughter behind the words, "I love you too, Nathan."

Nathan kissed the back of his neck and nudged him bodily upward. "I got that impression, yes. Come on, three more steps up and six to the right and you can fall down in an actual bed."

Tom let himself be nudged, lifting his feet carefully and making his way up the stairs. The six steps to the right were easier--through an open door to a wide expanse of turned-down bed with soft white sheets. Tom controlled his descent enough that landing on the bed didn't actually hurt more than existing in general.

He realized as soon as he was down that he was on Nathan's side of the bed. He braced himself to move, or tried to, but his body had turned to something between pudding and wet concrete as soon as he made contact with the soft, cool sheets.

Except then he felt the presence of Nathan's body braced above his, and he rolled up onto his side without even trying.

"You could stay there if you wanted to, sweetheart," Nathan murmured, and the pet name still felt shockingly filthy in his ears. 

Tom shook his head, wriggling back to make space, and patted his hand in Nathan's spot. He couldn't find the words to actually ask, but he had a feeling Nathan wouldn't make him. 

"Yeah, I just would've taken the other side for once, I wasn't about to leave you alone," Nathan murmured, settling into his spot between Tom and the door and pulling the covers up over both of them. "But this is good too. Now get some sleep."

Tom had never found it easier to obey.

* * *

Nathan woke to morning sunlight against his eyelids, the sounds and smells of Sumi's house in April, and the tentative touch of fingers running through his hair. 

He smiled, first, which earned him an acknowledging little breath and another pass of Tom's fingers. Then he opened his eyes and reached up, tugging Tom's hand down to his mouth and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. 

Tom's bruises were still as lurid as they'd been the night before, but there was healthy color in the rest of his face and a sparkle in his eyes that Nathan had not expected to see--to be allowed to see, directed at him--ever again. "Morning, Nathan."

Nathan briefly considered an equally normal and inconsequential reply, but he didn't want Tom to spend another minute not knowing for sure that Nathan had meant that _I love you_ as something actionable beyond Dinner Out, something that was going to matter for as long as Tom allowed it to.

"So, Cuba's closest, but that could get stickier than either of us wants to deal with right now," Nathan said, rubbing his thumb over Tom's knuckles. "Morocco, though, I think--"

Tom laughed, startled but not actually disbelieving, and twisted his hand in Nathan's grip to shove half-heartedly against his mouth. "Let's put a pin in our plans to defect until I can see out of both eyes, huh?"

Nathan tilted his head and shrugged a little, conceding the point even as he made it clear that he had heard what Tom said, and knew that those words had been no accident. 

_Our_ plans. 

"Obviously we're not going anywhere just yet," Nathan said from behind Tom's fingers, which were nowhere near preventing him from speaking. "But we can narrow down--"

"Uh-uh, not before breakfast," Tom said, smiling as he shook his head. He pushed up on his right elbow to lean over Nathan, and Nathan let himself be silenced with a kiss. 

It was all right. They were safe enough for now. And if it turned out they weren't, well... they could fix that. They were going to need to fix a lot of things.

Nathan pulled Tom closer, still kissing him but careful of everywhere he was hurt, and thought that this wasn't a bad place to start.


End file.
